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Rikard's avatar

Prices range from about 10 000:- for a low-end machine. On top of that, it needs a heated locker if it's to be placed outdoors, doubling the cost. Plus its internal batteries needs replacing 2-3 times inside ten years, no matter if it is being used or not and a battery runs you ca 3 500:-.

Very good business for the Chinese-American-UK medical companies who manufacture them.

(Also, there's a big technical difference between a "heartstarter" and a real defibrillator: the former is what's been bought and placed all over, the latter is the gear they have at hospitals, and those units a) cost a minimum of $50 000/unit and B) you need to be trained in advance to use it correctly. But the "heartstarters" are sold with the implicit assumption they work as in Hollywood movies. There's no depth capitalism won't sink to.)

2022 there were 22 000 (rounded to nearest thousand of) heartstarters in Sweden. I got the numbers from a registry set up so people can check where there are heartstarters, so they can "feel safe". Fear and paranoia sells. Let's say an average purchase price in toto of 20 000:-, including setting it up, times 20 000.

20 000*20 000= 400 000 000:-.

While it may seem trivial compared to the budget of the public health care sector (74 983 000 000:- for 2024) it's not peanuts either. I wonder how many China-made heartstarters have been bought in UK or Germany?

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Markker's avatar

Re the schoolboy story. There's a heart condition, and runs in families, called Long QT, which disregulates the electrical waves. This is only discovered after several fainting episodes or a heart attack and the remedy is a pacemaker. Then family members are tested. This problem was in my family, in-laws side, and fortunately, my children were not affected, although picked up in grandfather, one of 2 sons, (initial detection), then in one of his two sons. These heart problems were very rare before.

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